Wallington 1 v Kingston 3, Surrey League division 4 match played at Wallington on 23 October 2024
We always knew this would be tough. Kingston 3 were up against Wallington’s first team, and they had strong players (including a certain Mr P Lalić) on boards 1 to 3. That we ran them so close is testimony to the fighting spirit of the team and bodes well for future battles in Surrey division 4.
David Bickerstaff and Kingston captain Ed Mospan had good wins against lower-rated opposition on boards 4 and 5; Jon Eckert had an excellent draw with Black against the strong Wallington (and indeed Coulsdon) veteran Nick Edwards on board 2; while on board 4 Ye Kwaw miscalculated in a Closed Sicilian and paid the price against Robert Davies.
The board 3 match-up between Alicia Mason and David Jones was a tough battle that was resolved in Jones’s favour after just shy of 60 moves. Alicia played aggressively and was ahead for much of the game, but she made some errors in the endgame – time trouble was inevitably a factor – and let her advantage slip.
Despite that, she had good drawing chances until a misjudgement on her 52nd move. The position below looks tricky for White, with the Black king about to snaffle the white pawns, but with best play it is drawn. As it was, there was no way back from the move which Alicia chose. Such is the precision required in endgames, where every tempo is a matter of life and death.
Board 1 was a battle of the Kingston Peters – Peter Lalić (moonlighting for Wallington) and Peter Roche, a former Kingston chair now happily restored to competitive action after a five-year break. Facing the mighty Lalić is always a challenge, but Peter R gave him a good run for his money in a well-contested game.
Coulsdon 1 v Kingston 1, Surrey League division 1 match played at Coulsdon on 21 October 2024
Our Surrey League division 1 season started with an away match at Coulsdon. On paper we had a modest rating advantage on most of the boards, but Coulsdon invariably field a crop of fast-rising juniors, rendering such comparisons unreliable. Peter Large, John Hawksworth, Ash Stewart and Jasper Tambini made their league debuts for Kingston; congratulations and many thanks to all of them.
In the early skirmishes, Peter Lalić (pictured above) quickly gained a winning advantage against Timur Kuzhelev on board 4. The critical position came after 11. Rg5.
Board 7 saw Black fall into an opening trap in the Giuoco Piano. Unfortunately the setter of the trap was a 12-year-old uniformed schoolboy, and the victim was our own seasoned veteran David Rowson.
There was more bad news on board 3, where Ash Stewart’s opponent gained a massive amount of space in the centre and also won the exchange. The games on boards 5 and 6 were well-contested battles but always looked like being draws, so we would have to make a plus out of boards 1, 2 and 8.
I stood objectively better for most of my game, against a rather older junior, but it could easily have gone wrong. We join the action after 16 moves. I had played 16. Bh3, aiming at the hole on e6 and the rook on c8, but deserting the defence of e4. Black had responded with 16…c4, leaving both sides with a bewildering choice of pawn captures.
On board 2, it had seemed for some time that John Hawksworth had a slight edge against our Thames Valley League clubmate Supratit Banerjee, playing against an isolated queen’s pawn in a Queen’s Gambit Declined set-up. But in trying to turn that into something concrete, he ran short of time and of plans. Supratit combines a fine instinct for where the pieces should go, which reminded John of the 1980s Michael Adams, with resourcefulness and a very quick sight of the board, and took control, eventually putting one of John’s knights in a fatal pin.
So we needed a win from Peter Large on board 1, playing Black against Rahul Babu, who, with an ECF rating of 2298, is now England’s number 6 rated under-18 (Supratit is number 8 on that list). Peter rebutted a dodgy-looking innovation in the Closed Sicilian, and already had a slight edge when the critical position arose after 23. Qa1.
So a well-contested match finished 4-4. Several of the sides in this division do not always travel well, and it may be difficult for some of the juniors to play an away match finishing at 10.30pm (are we clutching at straws here?). But it confirms that the title race is wide open. Coulsdon look credible challengers, after Epsom won in 2023/24 and Guildford had been our main challengers in 2022/23.
* In case anyone is waiting in suspense for Peter Lalić’s finish: 17. Rg8+ Ke7 18. Bg5 pinned and won the black queen. If you failed to spot it, console yourself that Peter’s opponent, who presumably also missed it, is rated around 2100.
Peter Andrews, Kingston captain in Surrey League division 1
The latest of an occasional series in which Kingston members and friends of the club choose the player who has most inspired them. This profile is being published in three parts over the course of a month, building to a comprehensive overview of the life and career of the 10th world champion. Illustration by Andrew Brook
Part 1: The young attacking genius
“Boris Spassky has had a curiously uneven chess career for a world title-holder,” said Leonard Barden in the foreword to Bernard Cafferty’s 1972 book Spassky’s100 Best Games. “Teenage prodigy, junior world champion and the youngest ever qualifier for an interzonal at 18 (Fischer later lowered the record), Spassky was already the crown prince of international chess before he was 20. Then came years of disappointments, quarrels with his trainer and chess officials, and divorce before a second surge carried Boris to the summit in 1969.”
When Spassky was playing his first world championship match against Tigran Petrosian in 1966, my best friend at school and I decided to play our own match concurrently. We played on a travelling set on our daily train journeys; I wanted the Spassky role and he preferred to be Petrosian. Unlike the real match, “Spassky” defeated “Petrosian” in our contest.
I think one of my reasons for liking Spassky was his advocacy of the Kings Gambit. My first game with it was in a Glasgow Schools Congress. I was losing at move five, winning at move 11, but lost in 23. In contrast, Spassky’s record in the gambit was remarkable, playing 30 games without loss at the top level, defeating Fischer, Karpov, Portisch and Bronstein amongst others. This Bronstein game was used in the Bond film From Russia with Love:
Boris Vasilievich Spassky was born on 30 January 1937 in Leningrad, from whence the family were evacuated after the German invasion. He learned chess at the age of five while billeted in a house with older children. Returning to Leningrad after the war, Boris began to visit a summer chess pavilion, at first watching as a spectator before playing. He recalled that there was little food at that time and he would spend all day there, being devastated when it closed in September.
The following year he joined the Palace of Pioneers, where he met met his first chess trainer Vladimir Zak. Genna Sosonko tells how Spassky credited Zak not only with teaching him the King’s Gambit and introducing him to opera and the works of Mark Twain, but also arranging financial support for his family. At the age of 10, he defeated Mikhail Botvinnik in a simultaneous. In discussing his style, Garry Kasparov suggests that Spassky liked a strong, mobile centre and free development, with Zak cultivating his attacking prowess. I think this game – played by 12-year-old Boris – is a good example.
In 1951 Spassky changed his trainer, replacing the able pedogogue Zak with the attacking genius Alexander Tolush. They had first met in 1947 in the Palace of Pioneers when young Boris, given the responsibility of transmitting the moves in a telegraph match, was also given the honour of going to the buffet to buy Tolush more cigarettes. Valentina, Tolush’s wife, recalled that having no children of their own, they regarded Borya as their son.
Viktor Korchnoi, who had turned down Tolush as a trainer in 1950, testified that he soon noticed a dramatic improvement in Spassky’s play as he fought for the initiative in the style of Tolush. Spassky continued to improve in subsequent years, coming second to Mark Taimanov in the 1952 Leningrad Championship and receiving praise from Botvinnik. Before he had even played in a USSR Championship semi-final he was selected to play in the strong 1953 Bucharest international, where he played Vasily Smyslov in the first round.
This was Smyslov’s only loss in a tournament. “Smyslov didn’t talk to me for the rest of the tournament,” said Spassky. At a later date Spassky told how instructions had been received from Moscow, after the Hungarian player Laszlo Szabo had taken the lead, for the Soviet players to draw their remaining games with each other, so Spassky drew with Tolush, Petrosian and Isaac Boleslavsky. He now qualified as an international master.
1955 was a good year for Spassky – celebrating his 18th birthday during his first appearance in the USSR Championship Final, becoming world junior champion and qualifying for the Gothenburg Interzonal. This game was played in round 6 of that USSR final, where he finished equal third behind Smyslov and Efim Geller.
Spassky narrowly qualified from the Interzonal for the 1956 Candidates Tournament, becoming the youngest to earn the grandmaster title at 18. He was now appearing in the Soviet press, recognised for chess while also studying journalism at Leningrad University and achieving sporting success in the high jump with a leap of 1.80 metres.
Everything seemed to going well for Boris at this time, but there was a serious threat to his future progress. The interpreter for the Sports Committee reported Spassky for his inappropriate remarks and questions during his foreign travels. Fortunately an official in the committee, Dmitri Postnikov, decided to give him a terrible scolding but did not take the matter further. “Postnikov was my guardian angel”, said Spassky.
In 1956 Spassky shared first place in the USSR Championship, finishing a point ahead of another rising star, Mikhail Tal, but losing the subsequent first place play-off to Taimanov. On the journey to the Amsterdam Candidates, the Soviet delegation stopped over in Paris to attend the opening of a monument to the first Russian world champion Alexander Alekhine, at Montparnasse cemetery. Alekhine was always one of Spassky’s favourite players.
In Amsterdam Smyslov won the event, losing only to Spassky, who finished joint third with four other players, including Bronstein, Geller, Petrosian and Szabo. The main “prize” for him was the granting of a two-room apartment for him, his mother and two siblings, double the size of his previous one. Tal won the 1957 USSR championship, with Spassky fourth equal. Here is a celebrated game from that tournament.
Later that year Spassky led the Soviet team to victory in the World Students’ Olympiad, where they won every match, and finished first in his USSR Championship semi-final. Spassky now looked forward hopefully to the final in Riga, which would also be a zonal for the world championship, with four places at stake. At the age of 20, the chess world was at his feet.
Part 2: Reaching the summit
The 1958 USSR Championship was a qualifier for the Interzonal Tournament, with three future world champions and eight candidates fighting for four places. Spassky started well, celebrating his 21st birthday with a win against David Bronstein before having a run of five games with no wins. In the last round, playing White against Mikhail Tal, he needed a win to avoid having to join a play-off; Tal only needed a draw. Spassky refused an early draw offer, and the game was adjourned and resumed the next day. Overpressing he drove Tal’s king into his own camp, only to find that he had created a mating net for himself.
Tal became USSR champion and began his ascent to the global throne, winning the Interzonal and the Candidates, before in 1960 defeating the reigning champion, Mikhail Botvinnik. Spassky, by contrast, would now miss out on the battle for the world crown for the next six years.
Garry Kasparov suggests that Spassky’s nervous system was not yet ready for these challenges. However, Spassky did have some good results subsequently, including second in the 1959 USSR Championship, equal with Tal but behind Tigran Petrosian. That year he also got married, and in 1960 he and his wife had a daughter. But 1960 proved to be a difficult year: he suffered health problems, some poor results and even a breakdown in his marriage. He said that he and his wife had become “like opposite-coloured bishops” and in 1961 they divorced. He also parted company, though amicably, with his coach Alexander Tolush.
Early in 1961 Igor Bondarevsky became his new coach just as Spassky was playing in another Zonal USSR Championship. Despite a good start, a run of losses meant that yet again he failed to qualify when he lost his final-round game against Leonid Stein.
Bondarevsky was a very experienced professional coach and quickly established a good rapport with Spassky, succeeding in making him work much harder in training. This game in the subsequent USSR Championship (the 29th edition, also held in 1961, from 16 November to 20 December) shows the practical application of his improved understanding, provoking Tal into a gambling attack.
Spassky had finally won the USSR Championship, defeating the second-placed Lev Polugaevsky as well as Tal along the way. He admitted afterwards that he gained a lot of confidence from this victory and demonstrated this with good results in 1962.
Spassky first played against Viktor Korchnoi in the 1948 USSR Junior Championship, losing quickly after an early blunder. It was said that the young Boris left the tournament hall distraught. They both came from Leningrad and met each other many times in subsequent years, playing their last game together more than 60 years later. Spassky didn’t need to rely on attacks for his victories. In the game against Korchnoi below, played at the Moscow Zonal in 1964, the universality of his style is illustrated by the simple knight retreat on move 12 that leaves Black unable to maintain his centre.
At his best Spassky was described as having a universal style, comfortable in all positions, perhaps because he played a wide variety of openings. As White he mostly played e4 (sometimes with the King’s Gambit), but with a third of his games beginning d4. He was known for playing the Leningrad Variation (Bg5) against the Nimzo-Indian. As Black he mostly responded to e4 with e5 and had a good record in the Ruy Lopez, but he also played the Sicilian throughout his career. Against d4 he defended the Queen’s Gambit Declined and the Nimzo. One of his most notable and successful lines as White was the Closed Sicilian, used so effectively against Efim Geller in their 1965 and 1968 Candidates Matches. Having seen these games, I also started playing the Closed line. This was game 6 of the 1968 match.
In order to qualify for his 1966 World Championship match with reigning champion Tigran Petrosian, Spassky had to play 98 qualifying games, starting with the USSR championship semi-final and ending with his match wins against Paul Keres, Geller and Tal. Coach Bondarevsky had proved successful in overcoming Spassky’s famed reluctance to overstrain himself, with results showing the benefit of his hard work.
The 24-game Petrosian-Spassky match was held in Moscow between 9 April and 9 June 1966. Spassky was the favourite to win, but suffered a narrow 12.5-11.5 defeat. Afterwards he described his opponent as “first and foremost a stupendous tactician”. The first six games of the match were drawn, but Petrosian took the lead with a win in game 7. Games 8 and 9 were drawn, but in game 10 Petrosian produced the famous finish shown below to take a two-game lead. Both players’ seconds, Igor Bondaevsky and Isaac Boleslavsky, agreed that this was the best game of the match.
Spassky then fought back, equalising when he won the 19th game. However, winning games 20 and 22 gave Petrosian the 12 points he needed to retain his title (the champion kept the crown in the event of a drawn match). Spassky had the consolation of winning game 23 (shown below), although it would be fair to say that Petrosian may have been below par having just retained his title.
In the last game of the match, Spassky tried vainly to equalise the score – though, even in the event of a drawn match Petrosian would still have retained his title – before eventually agreeing a draw on move 77.
Despite the disappointment of coming up short against Petrosian, Spassky continued to play at a high level, winning Santa Monica without losing a game later in the year, beating Bobby Fischer during the tournament. In 1967 he played 70 games, losing only with Black to Hungarian GM Lajos Portisch and his old rival Efim Geller, and in the following year’s Candidates matches he defeated Geller, Bent Larsen and Korchnoi, each by three clear games. After losing to Spassky, Korchnoi stated: “I do not doubt for a minute that we are going to have a new world champion.”
Now he would face Petrosian again, and this time he was ready. He intended to keep the Tiger under constant pressure. The 1966 world title match between Petrosian and Spassky had produced just seven decisive games. The 1969 encounter, played in Moscow between 14 April and 17 June , and once again giving the holder Petrosian the advantage of retaining his title if the 24-game match was drawn, saw 10 decisive games.
Petrosian won with Black in the opening game, outmanoeuvring Spassky in an endgame, but Spassky returned the compliment with Black in game 4. Spassky went 3-1 up in the match, but Petrosian hit back to level at 3-3. Spassky then struck a crucial blow by winning game 17 with White against Petrosian’s Sicilian Defence – a surprisingly double-edged opening to choose given that the champion was tied at 3-3 and only needed to draw the match to retain his crown. Spassky then stretched his lead to +2 in game 19 (see below), emphatically refuting another Sicilian.
Spassky and Petrosian exchanged wins in games 20 and 21 to give Spassky an 11.5-9.5 lead, while Game 22 ended in a draw. Spassky was now ahead by 12-10, meaning that Petrosian had to win the final two games to retain his title. Petrosian essayed another Sicilian in game 23, but once again Spassky got the better of the play and, when the time control was reached, had to seal a move in the position shown below.
Spassky sealed 41. c6 and offered a draw in a winning position. Petrosian, on the day of his 40th birthday, accepted the offer. Spassky, after decades of struggle, had tamed the Tiger and become 10th world champion at the age of 32. The Soviet Union had a new champion, cementing their 20-year stranglehold on the title, but little did they know that a whirlwind was about to blow away their assumptions of global domination.
Alan Scrimgour, Kingston club chair
*Part 3, which will be posted later this month, will cover Spassky’s world championship battle with Bobby Fischer in Reykjavik in 1972 – the so-called “Match of the Century”, which came to define Spassky’s career.
Congratulations to Kingston member Ameet Ghasi on his tremendous achievement in gaining the grandmaster title at the age of 37
Earlier this week came the heartening news that IM Ameet Ghasi had secured (subject to Fide ratification) the third and final norm he needed to be awarded the grandmaster title. He got the all-important final norm at a very strong tournament in Fagernes, Norway, where he came joint third with 6.5/9 and recorded a tournament performance of 2609.
It will have pleased Ameet that his good friend, 21-year-old IM Jonah Willow, with whom he has recently trained, secured his first GM norm with 7/9 and a tournament performance of 2630, which gained him joint first place alongside Kazakh grandmaster Rinat Jumabayev, a two-time champion of Kazakhstan and a player with a peak rating above 2650.
Ameet is England’s 42nd GM and the oldest to win the title in active competition (Jonathan Penrose was awarded the title retrospectively in 1993 at the age of 60). It marks a neat double this year, as in August 15-year-old Shreyas Royal became the UK’s youngest ever GM.
Ameet would have achieved the GM title decades ago were it not for the fact that he prioritised getting a degree and working full time as an accountant. What is remarkable about his achievement is that he has made it to GM as an amateur player and after taking an eight-year break from the game. His great natural talent was underlined when in 2000, at the age of just 13, he shared first prize in the British Rapidplay Chess Championships. In 2015 he again shared the title, this time with Mark Hebden, and in 2023 he won it outright.
Chess journalist John Saunders dug out his British Chess Magazine report on the 13-year-old Ameet’s remarkable performance back in 2000: “About 400 players took part in the British Rapidplay Championships at Leeds Metropolitan University over the weekend of 18/19 November. There were five grandmasters among the 47 entrants in the Open, which had been won by Michael Adams in 1999. There was a two-way tie for first place between Aaron Summerscale and 13-year-old Ameet Ghasi. This was a sensational performance by the youngster from Birmingham, who plays for Slough second team in the 4NCL. After a steady start, during which he drew with experienced IMs Ferguson, Turner and Williams, he reeled off four successive wins in the final rounds, including the scalps of grandmasters Arkell and Hebden.”
Saunders was delighted by confirmation 24 years later of the Birmingham schoolboy’s prodigious talent. “I’ve been following Ameet’s progress avidly via the [English Chess] Forum these past few days. It was on the 65 bus from Richmond to home, browsing the Forum on my smartphone, that I first read that Ameet had achieved his title. I surprised myself (and my wife Elaine rather more) when I punched the air with pleasure on reading the news. Yesterday I sent Ameet a congratulatory message, mentioning his remarkable feat in defeating Hebden and Arkell on the same day aged 13. That should have counted as a GM norm in itself!”
Kingston club president John Foley also expressed his delight at the news in the October Kingston Chess Club Bulletin, publication of which fortuitously occurred on the very day Ameet secured the title. “This is a remarkable achievement for an amateur player who, in the real world, is an internal auditor for an American pharmaceutical company, which leaves him little time to devote to chess,” he wrote. ” It is a tribute to Ameet’s grit and determination that he carried this personal project though to a successful conclusion.”
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Ameet. “It’s like a huge milestone, and one that was challenging enough for me. But I can’t say I’ve been celebrating. It’s more just a relief, to be honest. I’ve been given a tag for many years, since I won the British Rapid event at the age of 13, of being a rapid and blitz specialist who should be a GM. Covid didn’t help, and I’ve always been basically working full time. I also took a long break from chess, so there were reasons for the delay. It’s been frustrating, but It’s good that it’s done now. That’s the main thing.”
Stephen Moss, Kingston club captain
* Thanks to John Saunders, former editor of both British Chess Magazine and Chess, for allowing us to use his photographs of Ameet playing Shreyas Royal at the 2023/24 Hastings Congress and in action for Kingston against Epsom. John also kindly allowed us to quote his BCM report on the British Rapidplay Chess Championships in 2000 at which Ameet first came to national prominence.
** Note to GM-elect Ghasi: Are you by any chance available for the first-team match against Coulsdon on Monday? 7.30pm start and we might be able to go halves on your ticket from Clapham Junction as conditions for playing.
Kingston 2 v South Norwood 1, Surrey League division 2 match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston, on 14 October 2024
For the second week in a row, Kingston hosted a team from South Norwood. The result was the same as last week, when we triumphed in the first round of the Lauder Trophy, but this time it was much tighter, with three knife-edge games still being vigorously contested as the three-hour playing session drew to a close. In the end, Kingston emerged as 4.5-2.5 winners, but that relatively comfortable margin by no means tells the whole story.
IM John Hawksworth was making his league debut for Kingston on board 1 – John has returned to chess after a break of more than 30 years – and was up against a tough opponent in Marcus Osborne. The two showed each other a good deal of respect and an early draw was agreed in the position below (with Black to play). A good result for Marcus with Black; a good result for John on his return to competitive action.
Half an hour later Kingston went one up when Julian Way defeated the ever combative Ron Harris on board 3. Black blundered in the position below and ceded White a material advantage that was sufficient to win the game 15 moves later.
Peter Andrews, with Black against South Norwood captain Simon Lea on board 4, pushed Kingston further ahead with what he afterwards called (in the nicest possible way) “a very pleasant crush”.
Peter’s win put Kingston 2.5-0.5 ahead and that soon became 3-1 when Alan Scrimgour and Kaddu Mukasa agreed a draw in the position below after a very solidly played game that had always been level.
David Rowson and South Norwood’s Paul Dupré also drew on board 2, but their game was more of a rollercoaster, and David felt he had let winning chances slip. “I was clearly winning after Paul played some inferior moves and I won a pawn,” David said afterwards, “but in time trouble I got confused and was glad to get a draw when I only had about 10 seconds left.”
That made it 3.5-1.5 and we couldn’t lose the match – always reassuring. But could we win it? We thought initially that it was in the bag, but Peter Roche (back in league chess after a five-year absence) was short of time and running out of good moves on board 6, and, while Alicia Mason (pictured above) was better against South Norwood stalwart Ken Chamberlain on board 7, she was also in a time scramble. The possibility of a drawn match flickered across our collective consciousness.
Peter Roche’s game was a tragedy of sorts. He was completely level after 50 moves and in other circumstances his opponent, Ibrahim Abouchakra, would have been tempted to take a draw. But given the match situation he had to play on and, with Peter very short of time and playing a little too passively (perhaps deeming the draw inevitable), White was able to manoeuvre his king into an active position and forced the blunder which cost Peter the game. A defining moment came on Black’s 51st move, where Peter makes a slight error which allows the White king to penetrate, From there, things rapidly went downhill.
That made it 3.5-2.5, and now it was all down to Alicia Mason, making her Kingston debut with White on board 7. She did not let us down, securing the win with both players running short of time. After the game, Alicia said she felt her opponent’s key error came in the position shown below.
A very satisfying start to the season in this tough division where the Kingston second team will be up against three first teams – South Norwood, Surbiton and Wimbledon – as well as a strong Guildford second team. We will need to perform as we did here in every match to ensure survival in this battlefield.
Kingston v South Norwood, Lauder Trophy first-round match played at the Willoughby Arms, Kingston on 7 October 2024
This was in the end surprisingly easy. South Norwood are canny operators in the Lauder Trophy, a knockout competition played over six boards with a maximum collective ECF rating of 10,500. That rating ceiling levels the playing field – you can’t play six highly rated players; you have to slice and dice – and South Norwood have made good use of their relatively limited resources to win it four times in the trophy’s quarter-century history. But on this occasion, their team was unusually weak, they defaulted a board and Kingston ran out emphatic 5.5-0.5 winners.
With board six already in the bag by default – a (sort of) debut victory for new Kingston junior Anqi Yang – our top two boards went to work to build on the lead. Mike Healey had White against Ron Harris, who as usual blitzed out his moves. But Mike is too strong a player to be intimidated as we lesser mortals are when faced by a very fast player who is always looking to grab the initiative. Ron made the somewhat rash decision to castle queenside in the position below, and Mike launched a ferocious attack that ended in victory after 30 moves.
David Rowson was playing South Norwood stalwart Simon Lea with Black on board 2, and the latter stumbled into a piece-losing tactic as early as the 11th move, in the position shown below.
South Norwood captain Ken Chamberlain held Jon Eckert to a draw on board 4 to save his side from being bagelled 6-0, but that result was enough to take Kingston over the line and confirm the victory. Joe Inch, another promising junior making his debut for the club, then scored an excellent win over the veteran Gengadharan Somupillai with White on board 5, playing confidently in a rook endgame.
Julian Way, with White on board 3 against the resourceful Ibrahim Abouchakra, played the longest and most complicated game of the night. Abouchakra played the Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defence and was always looking to attack, but Julian kept control of the situation. In the position below he is well on top, but is a little concerned about the exposed position of his king, which might give Black hopes of mate or a perpetual. Julian finds a pragmatic way to win, winning a piece and diverting the Black queen to a defensive role. The engine, which never sees ghosts, opts for something flashier.
Julian’s win, on the stroke of 10.30pm and after a three-hour battle, made it 5.5-0.5, and South Norwood had to face a long and forlorn drive back to south London. The match would have been a different story if they had been at home, where they tend to be much stronger, but that’s the luck of the draw. We now face Wallington in the semi-final, and this time we have to travel to that distant location. An advance party will be setting off immediately.
Dorking 2 v Kingston 4, Surrey division 5 match played at Crossways Community Baptist Church, Dorking on 3 October 2024
Kingston has a new third- and fourth-team captain in the Surrey League – one of the most demanding roles at the club – and Edward “Ed” Mospan started his tenure with an excellent 3.5-2.5 win at Dorking in a closely fought match. The future, as we always knew it would be, is safe in Ed’s hands.
Just getting to Dorking from Kingston is a battle, especially in a week when the Great Dorking Sinkhole had made entering the town by road almost impossible. But Ed’s team managed it and proceeded to play with great aplomb.
David Shalom (pictured above, right, in action at a recent blitz tournament at All Saints church in Kingston) had a terrific success on board 1 against Pablo Telford. The game was very sharp, with David proving that the more mild-mannered a person is the more aggressive they are likely to be at the chessboard. His aggression paid dividends when his opponent went horribly wrong in the position below.
David Bickerstaff also enjoyed an excellent win with Black on board 2, finding a neat tactic in the position below which as good as sealed the deal.
Aziz Sannie was the third Kingston winner on the night, with White on board 5, and Mark Sheridan got a crucial draw with Black on board 6 to ensure that Kingston went home (avoiding the sinkhole of course) with the points.
Rob Taylor lost on board 3 – we accidentally played him out of board order, but Surrey tournament controller Graham Alcock kindly forgave us the early-season slip and told us to sharpen up our act – and Captain Ed lost with Black on board 4, despite having both a time advantage and what he believed was a winning position. “If helpmate was an actual competition,” he remarked on the club’s WhatsApp group, “I would be a grandmaster.” Don’t fret about it Ed. As a person and a captain, you are already at super-GM level!
Streatham v Kingston, Alexander Cup first-round match played at St Thomas’s Church, Streatham, on 1 October 2024
In one sense this was groundhog day. We had played Streatham at exactly this time of the year last season at the same venue and come out on top by 7-3. But there were also significant differences: this was a revamped (and we hope renewed) Kingston team, with no fewer than four debutants – Peter Large, Sam Walker, Ash Stewart and Peter Hasson. We had been working through the summer to reinvigorate the squad – a team that stands still is doomed to fail – and this would be the acid test: would we be Man City, recruiting wisely, or Man United, living on past reputation?
We like to believe it is the former, though the home team fought hard to expose us as the latter. We outrated Streatham on every board and ran out 6.5-3.5 winners, but it was a tense evening nonetheless, and there were some anxious faces in the Kingston support group as 10pm approached and we started to enter time scramble territory.
The first game to finish was Julian Way’s on board 8. He was playing White against promising junior Qixuan Han, and in the following position Julian believed his opponent could have struck a critical blow. The move Julian feared was 20…c5, because of the threat from the Black queen to the pawn on g3 – the f2 pawn is pinned. The engine concurs that Black is better, but it takes a fair amount of manoeuvring to prove the advantage. As it was, Han chose a quieter line and a draw was agreed a few moves later. White has a slight advantage in the final position, but Julian was 20 minutes down on the clock and admitted his mind was still dwelling on the potential for Black of 20…c5.
Kingston’s first win came courtesy of club president John Foley on board 10. His opponent had fallen into a trap in the opening, leading to the loss of a vital pawn, and looked singularly dejected for the rest of the game. This is the game, with comments from John:
There was more good news soon after when David Maycock defeated Streatham veteran Graham Keane’s Pirc Defence on board 2, a tremendous win which showed that David has superb positional sense as well as sharp command of tactics. He has annotated his success in the Games section.
That made it to 2.5-0.5 to Kingston, and things became even better shortly afterwards when Sam Walker – one of Kingston’s new recruits and playing off a handy ECF rating of 2272 – won with Black on board 3. White had had a slight edge for most of the game after playing the English Opening, but the game swung suddenly when Sam landed a neat tactical blow in the position below. Watch how the apparently strong knight on d6 suddenly becomes a key target.
We were now 3.5-0.5 up and surely it was plain sailing. But not so fast: the team’s non-playing captain Alan Scrimgour thought we stood worse on boards 1 and 5, and Peter Andrews was under pressure on board 9. This was by no means over yet.
The next game to finish was on board 6, where another Kingston debutant, Peter Hasson, drew with Antony Hall. This was the key position in which Peter opted for a drawing line:
“I misplayed the opening and ended up in a slightly worse position but kept it in balance,” Peter explained afterwards. “At the end I wanted to stop Black posting a knight on c4, which is a bit awkward so used the exchanging combination starting with 24. Nxa7. If he plays 24… Bxb4, I have Nc6. I was probably slightly better at the end [a draw was a agreed a few moves later], but given the state of the match at the time I felt it simplest to secure the half-point which was close to taking us over the line.”
A good choice as it turned out, but there were wobbles on the way. On board 5, Ash Stewart was behind on time and, playing on the 10-second increment (the control was 75 minutes per player plus 10 seconds added on every move), went down fighting in a scramble. That made it 4-2. With Peter Large having the worst of it on board 1, the board 9 clash between Peter Andrews and Streatham captain Martin Smith now became crucial.
The Streatham player opted for an interesting line in the Catalan, with 7. Ne5, but Peter played accurately and established a small advantage out of the opening. Then a thunderbolt in the position below:
Fine indeed. Critical in fact, because just as Peter A took a draw another of our four (!) Peters, IM Peter Large, was losing to Phil Makepeace, who had played a impressively forceful game, on board 1. Had both Peters lost, it would have been 4-4 – such are the fine margins in team chess. As it was, we were still ahead by 4.5-3.5, so another point would do it (having lost on board 1, which counts for 10 points in the event of a tie, the higher maths of board count in the event of the match ending 5-5 did not appeal).
We were now confident David Rowson was winning on board 7, though he said later he was nervous of blundering away his advantage in a long-drawn-out endgame. But as so often it was Peter Lalić who took us over the line. His game on board 4 against Matthew Tillett was closely contested, but, with time and the pressure of the match situation no doubt taking their toll, his opponent blundered in the position below in which Black’s bishop on d4 is directing affairs.
That made it a match-winning 5.5-3.5 to Kingston, and David Rowson on board 7 duly added the point that made the win look a little more comfortable than it really was. David’s victory came courtesy of the “nervy endgame” he described, but the game had really been decided by the middlegame sequence shown below.
We got back to Kingston close to midnight, but it was worth it. A potential banana skin – Streatham are a very well-run club with a powerful squad of players – had been sidestepped, and the pursuit of our fourth successive Alexander Cup was successfully launched. Next up, probably in the New Year, dangerous wannabes Epsom. Even now, Epsom President Marcus Gosling – the Ernst Stavro Blofeld of Surrey chess – will be plotting our downfall from his heavily fortified lair somewhere on the North Downs.
Streatham v Kingston, Alexander Cup first-round match played at St Thomas’s Church, Streatham, on 1 October 2024
Kingston ran out 6.5-3.5 winners against a spirited Streatham side, who were outrated on every board, in the tense first-round Alexander Cup match in which this impressive game was played. David Maycock (pictured above left) on board 2, playing his first rated game for four months, carried on where he left off last season with this victory over Streatham’s experienced Graham Keane.